Robert, Thanks for the heads up on Ben. Although I've never met Ben in person, Ben has always been a help to me with Tango and Witango over the years.
I've sent him a brief note. Hope all is well with him. Tom Ferguson > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Garcia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 08:41 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Witango-Talk: New project and Sick Member > > 1st, Ben Johanson has been working for me for a couple of > years now, and he has worked with me hard on one particular > project. Not related, but he is having some serious digestive > issues and isn't doing well, in the ER at the moment, so if > you know him, you may want to wish him well. I am sure he > would appreciate it. > > BigHead's last major witango site, and by far biggest work in > terms of scope and use is peachdirect.com. > > http://www.peachdirect.com/ > > This system was not only a very sophisticated ecommerce site, > basically a mini bestbuy type site, but also we wrote the > entire backend, including all vendor fullfillment, vendor > communication, and since this is a private credit card site, > we wrote all of the communication modules custom for > communicating to the bank. Its a very large system. > > The site was written in witango, and then uses other > languages, mainly realbasic to deal with the bank com and the > vendor system and such. > The peachdirect site is almost dormant now, but at its peak > was doing over $20 million per month in orders. At its peak, > witango could barely take it, we had lots of workarounds, and > even wrote our own page caching system in witango to help > with the load. Originally, several years ago, the witango > site was only supposed to be up for a few months, until they > went to a bigger system. > > Well, the company has completely changed their name and > launched a new site/system and are planning the $20 > million/month level in just a couple of months. This time, we > wrote the ENTIRE system in PHP and it is running on the Zend > Platform. We have already ported large sites over from > witango to php, but this was a monster. The interesting part > is that every line of code is written in PHP. There is no > perl, realbasic, java, nothing. Not only that, we are using > standard PHP > 5.1.6 from CentOS 5.2 distribution, with yum installable > modules, like php-gd, php-xml, php-soap, etc. No pear, no > roll your own stuff at all. We have used a couple of classes > to generate excel files, and things like that, other than > that, its all standard php, with the addition of some > features like partial page caching from the Zend Platform. > > In this huge project, I don't think we have run into ONE php > bug. I can't think of a time we had to rewrite code, or > create an external object to make up for a php bug or > deficiency. Even all of the realbasic code that handled the > bank and vendor communication is written in PHP, some scripts > being run from command line via cron and such. > > Anyway, I am not trying to sell php, I have no gain there, > but as a developer I am amazed. To make the statement that we > have not had one workaround, is amazing. XML just works, soap > just works. The soap client is amazing, just give it a wsdl > and call your method, like 3 lines of code. Many have > contacted me if possible to port big projects over, yes it is. > > Anyway, just thought I would share, don't forget to shoot ben > a line if you know him. > > Link to new site: > > http://www.venue.com/ > > -- > > Robert Garcia > President - BigHead Technology > VP Application Development - eventpix.com > 13653 West Park Dr > Magalia, Ca 95954 > ph: 530.645.4040 x222 fax: 530.645.4040 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://bighead.net/ - http://eventpix.com/ > ______________________________________________________________ > __________ > TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf > ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
